


deeper shadows

by corgoptimism



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Gen, i really want there to be more spooky demon eve content out there, idk if this will have more chapters, its very stream-of-consciousness but thats on purpose thats how she thinks, probably? if it gets good feedback and i feel like it?, riot wont acknowledge the potential for eve to be a versatile and horrifying shapeshifter but i will, so instead of being afraid i will put some out there myself, this is totally not something i just slapped together bc im Lesbian For Demons but, time to actually be courageous enough to post my own writing hours, u kno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 14:39:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17582771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corgoptimism/pseuds/corgoptimism
Summary: the story of how evelynn comes to know humanity, and how humanity comes to know evelynn.





	deeper shadows

The first time she hunts, it is messy.

She does not yet know humans. She knows the taste of fear, the taste of pain, but not their individual natures, not their words and their customs. To her, they are as mice. Fragile, frightened creatures, who huddle away from the dark — her shadows — arming themselves with steel and sorcery, in a poor approximation of born weaponry. It is something she could never understand, having been roused with the potential for violence burning through her veins as soon as she first became aware of the world. She is unique; bloodlust given thought and flesh. Hers is an impulse to indulge and destroy. A demon, pure, untainted, focused as only one of the First Spirits could be; the mortal races, in comparison, live a muddied, confused existence.

Even so, she adores them; even so, she _needs_ them. She needs their every wail and whimper, needs to spill every drop of blood that flows through their veins, and squeeze every last tear from their wide eyes. She needs to mutilate, destroy, break, break, _break_ until she feels that same ecstasy again. The demon needs humanity to persist, to betray, lust, and scheme, so that they may again gift her a paradise, equal to the euphoria of all the world dying at once. A flooding of the senses that borders on agony; she wants, again, to be hanging on the precipice of pleasurable madness.

She loves them. She wants to ruin them, and then, lead them to ruin themselves.

This is the only desire she can identify, and it defines her as much as it controls her. It is the driving force that congeals her wispy spectre-self into a physical form. She molds herself a new shape with that desire as a guide; the demon's first-crafted form is the definition of a destroyer, bearing all the teeth, claws, and night-gleaming eyes of the land’s beasts. Patchwork mixes of tails and ears whip to and fro as she lowers herself to the ground, the physical sensations new and unwelcome; but, by the way the leaf litter molds to her too-many paws, it almost feels as if she was expected.

As if the forest had anticipated her arrival, and was embracing her coming, aiding her purpose. The shadows beneath its boughs and in its undergrowth hide her, as she once again turns invisible against the dark.

It is a hunter’s camp she tears through, that first night. The suffocating weight of her presence snuffs out his fire, smothering the last embers into nothing, as her spirit re-coalesces into something real, tangible, hungry. She cannot feel the chill of the night air on false flesh, but she can feel him, smelling and seeing his beacon of emotional energy as he rests after a well-earned meal. It is, to her, a siren's song; irresistible by nature, and it drives every other thought from her mind.

Razor fangs part the skin of his neck as if it were water.

He dies half his sleep, in a whirl of talons that drip black ink and jagged teeth that sprout from the gargantuan maw of a multi-limbed horror. She consumes him utterly, tearing at his flesh until he becomes little more than a ruined chunk of meat, her senses clouded by a need that drives her to insanity. Every limb flayed, every bone broken; she does not stop until there is nothing left for her to take. 

Passionately, determinedly, she rends him to pieces, and drinks his pain into herself until there is nothing left to take.

* * *

 

She comes to herself surrounded by scraps of his shredded corpse.

Blackened viscera, drained of blood, lies in ripped chunks about the clearing, veins pulsing with otherworldly violet. There are gouges in the soil from where she dug deep enough into his flesh to pierce the other side; her claws, stained, curl further into the dirt as she exhales unsteadily. Her breath has no warmth, and does not fog in the night air; not like his did, before he was so very cold.

The demon crouches there, silent, for a moment, quivering with ecstasy, anchoring herself by tearing into whatever she can and gripping tight.

\-- And then, _curiously_ , as she looms above the site of such a glorious kill, her excitement starts to disappear.

She grasps for it, internally, but it slips between her fingers, elusive as mist. With sharp focus, she can just-barely catch it, brush it, before it retreats ever further, seemingly spurred into vanishing more quickly as her frantic attempts to reclaim it escalate. All too soon, she is forced to acknowledge the gnawing hunger that still torments her, even now, after she had thought herself sated. It drags itself to the forefront of her mind as the rush of the kill — no, the pain — begins to melt away, leaving only empty jaws and what was once a man. Without her notice, the tingling in her shadow-flesh has lessened to the point of background sensation, drowned out by the noises of a woodland night come back to life.

It is then that she understands.

A snarl rips from one set of gnashing teeth.

She detests death, detests the black wolf that chases souls to their ends and rips them apart; he takes her hunts for his own, a thief among apex predators. She knows him, has seen him, back when she was less than nothing; there was enough suffering then to sustain them both, but not anymore.

The war has passed. Death is no longer a welcomed companion to the slaughter, but an unwanted end to her endeavors. Then, when she first encountered the Kindred, there were no shortage of the dead, the dying, the suffering; peacetime has softened the world, and, in this new age, they rob her of her rightful claim.

Even now, after she has so painstakingly tracked prey, the satisfaction is short-lived, the duration of mortal life, brief and unfulfilling —

— not enough.

Hunger tugs at her extremities with an insistence that she cannot ignore.

Behind it looms emptiness, her greatest foe, a numbness that threatens to overwhelm her once more as she cradles the fleeting embers of her first kill; her first treasure, the split-second agony of a dead man. Without his soul to sustain his flesh, the memory wanes and flickers, and the prickles of pleasure from trying to recall it vividly are, at best, teasing; at worst, they are a time limit.

How long can she go without another meal — a _better_ meal? How long, before consciousness fades and all that remains is a void with no sensation?

Too fast, this time. There has to be some way — some way to make them last. To make them give more. To manipulate flesh and bone carefully enough to prolong dying, rather than hasten it, to learn their soft limits and drive them to the brink --

More, _more_ — the next, she will force them to live longer. Somehow. Maybe that is it. Maybe that will satisfy her ravenous desire.

It _pulls_. It is a need the demon must obey. She will go to her next beacon, stalk her next prey, hunt and hunt until, finally, she is full.

She drops the beast-shape, and disintegrates into mist, leaving the last remains of him to fall through her form and land, lifeless, upon the soaked forest floor.

**Author's Note:**

> this is honestly the first thing ive posted and/or edited at all in a very long time, so if you leave a comment, please be gentle, lol. im just a humble lesbian who wants her monster favs to be more viscerally horrifying but also have more exploration to their characters beyond "like shes evil... but horny." anyways eve has a lot you can extrapolate from her lore and the Cowards at riot video games dont even scratch the surface. So Im Here. I dedicate this work to myself and all the other monster-loving wlw out there. Be free and be valid, sisters
> 
> as a note the usage of pronouns/epithets Sucks i know but this is set before she actually had a name, so yeah, it Be That Way when ur a nameless shadow creature.


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